Sally Bishop eBook

Some of that instinct, but in its various and lesser
degrees, is left in us now. For one moment it
rose in the mind of Sally Bishop, as she turned into
Bedford Street and directed her course towards Piccadilly
Circus. It had crossed her mind in suspicion—­the
uprush of an idea, as a bubble struggles to the surface—­that
the man whom she had found waiting outside the premises
of Bonsfield & Co. had had the intention in his mind
to speak to her as she passed. Now, as she looked
sideways when she turned the corner, and found that
he had altered his direction—­was following
her—­the suspicion became a conviction.
She knew.

In the first realization, the thought of adventure
thrilled her. A life, quiet and uneventful such
as hers, looks of necessity for its happiness to the
little thrills, the little emotions that combine to
make one day less monotonous than another. But
when, having reached Garrick Street and, looking hurriedly
over her shoulder, she found that not only was he
still following, but that he had perceptibly lessened
the distance between them, the spirit of interest
sank—­died out, like a candle snuffed in
a gale. In that moment she became afraid.

It is nameless, that terror in the mind of a woman
pursued. Yet without it one of the first of her
abstract attractions would be gone. Undoubtedly
it is the joy of the pursuer that the quarry should
take to flight. Would there be any chase without?
But long years of study amongst the more advanced
of us have made the fact of rather common knowledge.
The woman has learnt that to be caught there must be
flight, and, in assuming it, she has acquired for
herself the instincts of the pursuer. So an army,
resorting to the strategy of retreat, is still the
pursuer in the more subtle sense of the word.
It is this strategy that is cunningly taught in the
modern, genteel education of the sex. The virtue
of chastity it is called, but over the length of time
it has come to be a forced growth; it has altered
intrinsically in its composition. Education has
learnt to make use of chastity, rather than to acquire
it for itself. And, after all, what is it in
itself, when the gilt of its glamour is stripped, like
tinsel, from the fairy’s pantomimic wand?

There is, when everything has been said, only one
value in chastity in its ideal sense, so long as we
are tied to these conditions of human instinct, and
that is in the value that it brings to women.
Without it, a woman may be the essence of fascination;
she may be the completeness of attraction, but for
the need of the race she is undesirable. Without
chastity, a woman may be most things to a man, but
she cannot be a mother to his child.